"Morning, Detective.”
The title still landed with a small charge. She had earned it three months ago, passed the exam on her first attempt, and been promoted within the Adirondack County Sheriff's Office. McKenzie had been the first to shake her hand. Avery Rivera, the acting sheriff, had been the second. Callie carried herselfdifferently now, not because the badge was new but because the responsibility was.
"Walk us through it," she said.
Hargrove led them around the side of the house. "Daughter lives in Albany. She called the neighbor last night when Maggie didn't answer the phone. Neighbor came over at first light, saw the window, and dialed 911. We haven't touched anything inside."
Callie and McKenzie pulled on gloves and booties and entered through the front door.
The smell of it hit first. Not decomposition, not yet. Wine and copper. Faint but unmistakable. The house was tidy. The kitchen was to the left, living room to the right, hallway straight ahead. Family photos lined the walls. Callie noted a reading chair with a blanket draped over the arm. There was a cat food bowl on the kitchen floor, half full.
The home office was at the end of the hallway.
Callie stopped for a moment, taking it all in.
Maggie Coleman was on the floor beside an overturned office chair. She lay on her right side, one arm pinned beneath her, the other extended toward the desk as if reaching for something. She wore a cotton blouse, dark slacks, reading glasses hanging from a chain around her neck. The blouse was soaked through on the left side. The blood beneath her had pooled wide and dried to a dark shellac against the hardwood.
Glass was everywhere. The window behind the desk was blown inward, a jagged hole punched through the center, fracture lines radiating outward like a frozen web.
The desk lamp was still on. Its yellow light fell across the mess as if nothing had changed.
Maggie had spent years telling the town's stories. Now she was one.
"One shot," McKenzie said from behind her. He hadn't stepped fully into the room yet. He was scanning the walls, the ceiling, the angles.
Callie crouched near the body without touching it. The entry wound was in the upper left chest, just below the collarbone. Maggie's reading glasses had twisted off the chain and lay cracked beneath her shoulder. Her right hand was curled near her face, fingers stained faintly with wine. The left arm was extended toward the desk, frozen mid-reach. She never made it out of the chair. The chair had tipped and taken her with it.
The room was cool from the night air pouring through the broken window. Rigor had set in fully. She had been here for hours.
Callie stood and moved to the wall opposite the window. There was a hole in the drywall, shoulder height, roughly eighteen inches to the left of a framed newspaper front page. She leaned close. The plaster was cratered inward and she could see the dull glint of metal at the back of the cavity.
“Found the round,” she said. "Passed through her and kept going."
"High-powered rifle," McKenzie said. He was at the window now, studying the glass pattern. "Inward shatter. The shot came from outside, across the yard."
Callie stepped beside him and looked through the ruined frame. The backyard sloped gently downward for about forty yards before leveling out into an open field. Beyond the field, a ridge covered in dense spruce and birch rose against the lightening sky.
"How far do you think it is to that ridge?" she asked.
“Um, three hundred yards," McKenzie said. "Maybe a touch less.”
Callie looked back at the window. The opening was narrow, maybe three feet wide. From that position, at night, through that frame, into a seated target.
“Well, that’s something,” she said.
McKenzie read her mind. "Aye. That's not a lucky shot."
They went outside. The morning was cool and the grass heavy with dew. Their boots left dark tracks as they crossed the yard toward the field. Callie stopped halfway and turned back to face the house. From here the office window was a small rectangle of lamplight. At three hundred yards it would be barely visible. At night, with the desk lamp on and Maggie silhouetted against it, the shooter would have had a clear target.
She kept walking. McKenzie fell in beside her. They reached the base of the ridge and looked up. The slope was steep but manageable, covered in a mix of spruce, birch, and deadfall. A natural shooting position sat about two-thirds of the way up where a flat rock shelf jutted out from the hillside. From there, the angle to the window would be unobstructed. And the tree cover behind could swallow a person in seconds.
Callie scanned the approach. A game trail ran along the base of the ridge heading east, toward the road. Easy in, easy out.
McKenzie pointed to a cluster of trees much closer to the house, maybe a hundred and fifty yards out, near a rotting fence line at the edge of the property. “Could've taken the shot from there. Half the distance."
Callie looked at the closer position, then back up at the ridge. "From there you're shooting through brush. Branches in the way. And your only exit is back across the open field." She studied the rock shelf again. "Up there you've got a clear line to the window, stable ground, and you're back in the trees before anyone knows what happened."
"So he picked the harder shot."
